Vegan Dinner Recipe: Day-before-shopping-day Dahl

Frying goodness

It's Sunday, and I worked all morning and did uni readings all afternoon. I DIDN'T want to shop for dinner. Tomorrow is veggie shopping day, thank you very much, and I don't darken the door of a supermarket on a Sunday. That way madness lies.




We have a big pantry, and a pretty big freezer, so I found some frozen vegan aloo parathas and some red lentils (yes, I keep them in the freezer. We have moths, okay?) And I raided the veggie drawer in the fridge. Here is what I came up with:

Three potatos
A nub of sweet potato
About five medium mushrooms
A shallot
Some garlic
Two tomatoes
Some frozen peas (I'll probably use half a cup)
Two carrots
and a couple of spring onions.

I will also use

Three quarters of a cup of red lentils
About four cups of water/veggie stock

2 teaspoons of
Cumin seeds
ground corriander
tumeric
and 1 teaspoon of salt (himself loves the salt.

This is going to be a quick meal, so first I use a veggie steamer to steam the potato, sweet potato, and carrots in a double boiler for ten minutes so they don't have to cook in the dahl.

Steamed potato, sweet potato and carrots.

Then the most time consuming bit: Cooking the red lentils.

Some people say rinse the lentils in a colander. Theoretically this is an excellent idea, but I am far too lazy for that kind of malarkey.

Put the lentils and the water/stock together in a saucepan (I use the bottom of the steamer, because I hate dishes).

Bring to the boil, but for Pete's sake keep an eye on it because once those little suckers start boiling the scunge on top of the water starts frothing up and the whole thing overflows and cooks onto your stovetop. NOT COOL.

Look at all that lentil scunge.

Scoop the lentil scunge off the top with a plastic cup, until you can see normal boiling water and lentils again, and lower the heat.

This is what it should look like post scoopage.

Cook, stirring sporadically, until the lentils are cooked through and soupy, but not TOO think because we want to keep cooking them with the veggies for a bit. This will take about twenty minutes.

See how the lentils are broken up but it's a bit soupy? That's what you're looking for

Pour the lentil mix in with the steamed veggies and rinse out the saucepan. HAH. Dishes victory.

Okay so it looks like a really boring soup... for now.

Heat some grapeseed oil, fry up the onion and garlic, then add the cumin seeds until they're a bit dark and fragrant,

Then add the corriander, tumeric and salt,

Stir! Cook for a couple of minutes.

Add spring onions and mushrooms, you may need more oil at this stage to cook the mushrooms. Two to five minutes.

Then add the tomato and stir till it's all a bit cooked together.

Now pour the lentils and steamed veg over the top and give it a good stir.

At this stage I added some baby spinach I discovered and some peas, then tasted it and added a bit more salt.

Put the whole thing on low, and keep it simmering to let all the flavours mix together properly.

In the mean time, fry up some delicious paratha and cook up those curry puffs you found in the back of the freezer as well (it's a veritable FEAST I tell you!) as per the packet instructions.

Serve it up and eat it, this recipe serves 3-4 grown adult people. If you want to do it on the cheap/healthy, you can replace the paratha and curry puffs with with white rice/brown rice/quinoa and pour the dahl over the top.

In other news, this scrappy bits and pieces meal was ABSOLUTELY delicious, I rate it 9 out of 10.

Ready to go.